


Bird by Bird

by Exxact



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Aftermath of trauma, Descriptions of Minor Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluffy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mission Gone Wrong, Pre-Canon, Rating is for descriptions of minor character death, Sharing a Bed, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29067141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exxact/pseuds/Exxact
Summary: Jim lowers his hands to the level of his nose.  Now, in addition to sacrificing any remaining air of command, he’s humiliating himself in front of someone he’s been reluctantly nursing a crush on for the past four months.  Not that Bones would reciprocate his feeling.  Not that Bones could want him, especially now.  He’s an affront, a caricature of manhood to someone of Bones’ standing—a novelty at best and an irritant at worst.No, there is worse now.  You send him your victims, he returns them with the minimal amount of scars.  Bones would find some kind of poetry in that, if he didn’t punch Jim in the face for saying it first.How could he not resent you?Following the first away mission that goes horribly wrong, Kirk finds himself seeking comfort with his Chief Medical Officer.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	Bird by Bird

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely people in the Triumvirate Discord server, with a special nod to Bev for our motto: "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

It’s not the process of writing twelve death notifications to parents, the roiling of his stomach, or the ducking of Spock’s head when he passes him in the hall that causes Jim to collapse. 

No, it’s the way Bones closes his eyes when he walks into his office, as though he can’t bear the sight of him.

“I tried, Jim,” he says after several long moments, his scrubs coated in filth. “I tried damn hard to save them, and I know you did, too.”

Jim has no words to respond with, doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to speak again. He slumps against the wall, crossing his arms as though the cold could still reach him here, on his own ship, surrounded by a crew he is prepared to die for at any given moment but who are more likely to die for him.

_Idiot. Coward. Murderer._

“C’mere—how long have you been wandering around all chapped and bloody? Why the hell didn’t Spock or Christine drag you back down here hours ago after that preliminary scan? Dammit, Jim! You’ll be the death of me.”

_Thirteen bodies, twelve of them dead, packed in a cave barely large enough for five people. Jim had forgotten what it was to be warm._

Jim lurches upright, reaching for the bottom drawer of Bones’ desk. He’s stopped by a swat to his wrist. 

Bones sighs, heavy and familiar. “You don’t need a drink, Jim. You need to lie yourself down on that couch while I replicate you something to eat.”

_Hunger, writhing through bodies and minds that Jim hoped were no longer conscious. He’d had to pull Ensign Savon off of him before she could bite into his throat, her eyes bursting onto his shoulder seconds later…_

“It was a parasite, wasn’t it?” he finally asks, worrying his hands together.

_Hunger, until it fills him with enough adrenaline to run into the storm, his body shimmering before he can even take a breath of clean air._

Bones swallows deeply, nodding. “Some kind of parasite in the snow that the standard tricorders couldn’t detect. Worked so damn quickly on them that I’m not even worried about testing you further right away. If you had it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

_Hunger’s obsession coursing through him when they were steps away. Steps away from avoiding death if he’d just—_

Jim’s voice raises in panic. “What if I’m a carrier? What if I’m about to give it to you?”

“I told you, Jim—if you’d contracted it, you’d already be in the morgue with the rest! Now, be a good little starship captain and let me work.”

_Good._ Jim closes his eyes, his breath shuddering out until there’s nothing left to him but raw exhaustion. The word thuds around in his brain, drawing a yelp out of him before he can even think to make it. 

Bones turns away from the replicator, setting a platter down next to the couch. He kneels beside Jim, nudging him upright, guiding him until he’s resting on it.

“Shh, that’s it. You’re gonna let me take care of you. You’ll eat this oatmeal and drink one of Christine’s nutrient shakes and then I’m going to give you a sleeping hypo. It’s a three-hour quick release, so you’ll be out and back before you know it. How’s that sound, Jim?”

Jim keeps his eyes on Bones’ back as he prepares the hypo, trying to ignore the feeling of food settling in his belly. He gets through half the bowl before he has to take his head in his hands to quiet the vertigo and nausea and he hears himself make another pathetic noise. 

Bones’ hands upon his shoulders appear nearly instantaneously. “Well, you managed that much. It’s enough for now if the rest’ll end up on the floor.”

Jim lowers his hands to the level of his nose. Now, in addition to sacrificing any remaining air of command, he’s humiliating himself in front of someone he’s been reluctantly nursing a crush on for the past four months. Not that Bones would reciprocate his feeling. Not that Bones could want him, especially now. He’s an affront, a caricature of manhood to someone of Bones’ standing—a novelty at best and an irritant at worst. 

No, there is worse now. _You send him your victims, he returns them with the minimal amount of scars._ Bones would find some kind of poetry in that, if he didn’t punch Jim in the face for saying it first.

_How could he not resent you?_

Bones frowns, his eyes scanning Jim’s face in a way that is far more reminiscent of Spock. “And don’t go thinking that I’m going to laugh at you or start plotting my coup the second you knock out. If there’s anyone who needs this right now, it’s you, Jim. So stop dwelling on what you think my opinion of you is and stick your arm out so I can get this going and hook you up to a saline drip.”

Jim nods, turning his body so that Bones can swab a clean spot on his arm and stab a hypo into the gap between his torn sleeve and the body of his shirt. 

“You mind if I get in there and clean you up while you're out? You’ll be doing me a favor if you agree, get my mind off things.”

And what else can Jim do but smile weakly, letting Bones guide him down until he’s level with his thigh, a hand running through his filthy hair the last thing his mind registers.

“You know, for all that damn flirting, I think I like you better awake.”

+

Sixteen hours later, Jim heaves himself out of bed. He’s counted every one of them since he woke up on Bones’ couch, as though keeping time as neatly as Spock could give him a fraction of his self-control. He’d settled himself into a routine of showering, reading, and floor exercises that had only finally broken when he’d fallen asleep twelve minutes ago, waking up painfully aware that he hasn’t eaten since Bones forced him to.

_Bones, Bones, Bones_. He occupies more of Jim’s headspace than he knows is sane, but how can Jim not be drawn to him when he’s all the best parts of Earth—warmth, compassion, humor—trussed up in the most unexpected package? He makes a noise in the back of his throat, remembering the glee in his eyes when Jim had told him he’d been thinking of his CMO as ‘Sawbones’ until the position had been filled, his laugh when he’d first tried out the nickname. As much as Spock challenges Jim in the best ways possible, there’s nothing like hearing Bones come to his side, cursing or fussing or flirting while Jim envies Spock the attention he’s effortlessly able to capture.

It’s difficult for Jim to get up at first, his stomach throbbing and sour but familiar enough to ignore as he ties a robe over his lounge pants and puts on his loafers. However, it’s too easy to use his override code to enter Bones’ cabin, his head throbbing and his heart pounding. He’s beyond guilt, beyond neediness, beyond shame for anything besides living when twelve young crew members are dead. 

“Sit on down, Jim,” Bones’ voice tells him from behind the bathroom door, and it’s the fastest Jim’s obeyed anyone since the colony. Other than a raised brow, Bones offers no comment on the invasion of privacy Jim’s just committed when he emerges, lacking his tunic and boots. Instead, he pours a second glass of brandy from the decanter, sliding it across the desk with the tip of his index finger. 

Jim takes it, clearing his throat. “Bones. I’m not—I can’t—“ he tries, as if saying the truth they’re both thinking will cause him to crack open and seep out until neither of them can re-assemble him into Jim Kirk.

“You’re assuming I’m all caught up in my opinion of you again. Except it’s turned into a secret hatred of you, obsessing over how you’re not fit to be a captain, because how could a captain make a mistake like that?” 

The words, spoken aloud, are a slap across the face. Bones waits for several seconds, watching Jim’s frozen expression before he continues. 

“Well, I’m no tactician. Just a simple country doctor they threw at you and said ‘here’s the only poor sap with common sense we’ve got’. But if I know anything, it’s that what your feeling is why you _should_ be commanding a starship.”

“But how—how do I do this?”

Bones sighs, tipping his glass back in unison with Jim. “That I’m not sure of,” he says once he’s finished it, his voice gentling, “day by day, it’ll be. Task by task, mission by mission, night by night. And I’ll tell you one thing—I’m not goin’ anywhere while you figure it out, and neither’s Spock.”

“Spock’s—Spock’s good,” Jim tries, his words faltering under Bones’ sincerity.

“He is, for all the trouble we cause one another. Wouldn’t hurt a fly if he didn’t have to. That’s one thing I’ll give those Vulcans—they’re not a violent bunch and I’ll be damned if we couldn’t learn a thing or two from that.”

Jim isn’t sure what it is this time that collapses him onto the table, but he knows it doesn’t matter. He’s knocked his glass to the floor one moment, fallen against the table the next, and then he’s kissing Bones as hard as he can before tearing himself away with a sob. He’s thought about this moment and it’s infinite variations dozens of times since Bones had first poured him a glass in this same room months ago—how he’d dress and talk and move, how he’d make such a guarded man vulnerable enough to feel the affection Jim overflows with at any given moment. Even now, especially now, amidst broken glass and bodies, he _needs_ to be Bones’ favorite, needs it so much it frightens him.

“C’mere, Jim,” Bones murmurs, pulling them both away from the wreckage, sitting Jim in his lap in the soft chair next to his bed, “put your head right on my shoulder, there you go.”

"Please, Bones,” Jim whines, kissing the exposed pout of his lower lip, his tears wetting Bones’ cheek from the angle until he guides Jim’s face down against the warm skin of his clavicle. “I wanna—"

"Jim, baby, darlin'. Not right now. But I'll get you to sleep and we can discuss this in the morning--how ‘bout that?”

"I don't blame you for not wanting me. All I’ve done so far is kill your patients and blubber to you.”

Jim’s face is shoved firmly into Bones’ neck, but if he’d been looking up, he would see the tears prickling in his eyes instead of just feeling the comforting squeeze of his arms. "No, Jim. What I mean is that my mama raised me right and you're in no frame of mind to be kissin' on.”

"Just tell me you don't want me,” Jim spits, the kindness in Bones’ rejection stinging more than he’d thought possible. “It's okay.”

Bones sighs, kissing Jim’s earlobe. "I don't want you to regret it is all. And me? I’d regret existin’ if I took advantage of you like this. You’re not you right now, Jimmy.”

"I won't regret it, Bones,” Jim promises, tilting his face up enough to meet Bones’ tired, wet eyes with his own.

"And I won't regret lettin' you stay the night and hunker down with me,” Bones replies, smoothing Jim’s hair against his palm. “I'll hold you and love on you, but I won't do more than that. Not right now.”

Bones clears his throat once he feels Jim nod, the vibrations thrumming against Jim’s cheek. “Jimmy, if you get up, I’ll replicate you a nutrient shake—don’t look at me like that, now—and you can drink it in bed if you’re careful.”

Without a second thought, Jim unfurls himself from Bones, though he holds onto his hand until the last second, rushing to tuck himself into bed to distract himself. Bones’ sheets are softer than his own, flannel instead of cotton, and Jim finds himself wondering about the story behind the rabbits that dance along the top edge of the quilt beneath the comforter as he takes off his robe and lays it on the chair.

Bones returns some short, uncertain time later wearing navy pajama pants and a new shirt, his hair mussed. “I’ve never heard you complain about chocolate, so I took an educated guess,” he says, handing a regulation glass and a napkin to Jim, who begins drinking it without question once he’s blown his nose and wiped his face.

“I meant it when I told you to be careful with that,” Bones says, slowly tucking an arm around Jim. “My Joanna made me that quilt as a going-away present, and I think I’d set fire to the ship before I’d let anything happen to it.”

Jim sniffles, humming in response as he makes progress on his drink. Brandy and watery chocolate make for odd bedfellows, but his stomach accepts the addition without complaint.

“You’re holding it down well,” Bones tells him, brushing a kiss to his hair. “Never thought I’d see the day Jim Kirk didn’t have a healthy appetite. That alone is cause for concern!”

“‘m done,” Jim mumbles before he can regret it, setting the mostly-empty glass down on the shelf space furthest from the bed, unwilling to leave the cozy press of Bones’ arms and the weight of the blankets. He hesitates once he turns back around, feeling Bones ease him down and onto his side.

“You just tell me if you want me to move, okay?” Bones murmurs, rubbing Jim’s back. “And if you get cold, Scotty’s got a whole pile of tartan blankets in the bathroom for some reason.”

Jim snorts, his hands fidgeting with the edge of the pillow until its inability to soothe him causes him more anxiety. He rolls himself over without thinking, tucking Bones into his arms.

“That’s my Jim,” Bones croons, his voice falling an octave into a thick, syrupy purr. “Had a feelin’ you were a snuggler.”

Jim would reply if he could, if anything in his mind were able to settle into coherence. It’s the second time today he’s been unable to talk, but he’s another sort of overwhelmed now, relieved and more hopeful than he knows he has any right to be.

Bones reaches for Jim’s hand, kissing along his pulse once, twice. “You’re somethin’ else, darlin’,” he whispers into Jim’s skin, his lips still pressed there when Jim finally falls asleep.


End file.
